Blogging Anniversary

Niall O'Donnell 19 Comments

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for a year now. It really only feels like a few months ago. A really big thanks to everyone who’s been reading and commenting. I hope you’ve found something interesting and perhaps illuminating every now and then. It makes it much easier to put in the work to write regularly when you know someone’s going to read it, so thank you.

It’s a strange thing, writing.

Perhaps not so much strange as intermittently terrifying really. Before you start, and every now and then after then, you get seized with this horror: Oh my God, people are going to see this! Anyone in the world could read this! How could I possible release this into the world? Writing anything that’s going to be public is embarrassing, at first anyway. All these things that have bouncing around in your head are suddenly out there in the ether, for anyone to criticise or laugh at.  You have to believe that your ideas are worth reading about, and that you can write about them well enough, without taking that for granted and still working hard to come up with good ideas, and thinking about your writing to make sure it’s at the standard you want. I think after a while you write fairly automatically, but these moments of panic and embarrassment still occur occasionally. Luckily, enjoying writing, and being interested in what you write, makes those moments very brief and infrequent.

Finally, it would only be appropriate to have a brief look at the word anniversary itself. It’s derived from Latin, the words annus (year) and versus (past participle of the verb vertere, meaning to turn, and the origin of modern words like versus, reverse, inverse, converse etc.). The two words are put together to mean returning every year. It can also be a tricky word for English learners, as some languages use a word similar to anniversary to mean birthday, which is of course a type of anniversary.

Anyway, here’s to another year, wherein I intend to keep writing as I have already, and I hope you’ll still be hear reading. Thanks again!

19 thoughts on “Blogging Anniversary”

  2. Congrats on making it this far! I’ve been going only a few months longer than yourself, it seems, and many a time i’ve come close to deleting my blog, so a year feels like comittment! I related to the bit up there that you wrote on that sense of horror that your words are public; that anybody could read them. Unlike me, though, at least you can rest assured that you actually sound intelligent when you blog, AND you have a solid theme. Consistency is something we don’t all do well ( or, at all, if you’re me) so i admire those who can. Anyhoo, i’m looking forward to reading more of your interesting and educational posts! ( including the ones you’ve posted recently but which i haven’t caught up on yet but will) Happy Bloggiversary! 🙂

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    • Thanks, I think you’re absolutely tight about consistency. I think I’d always had a vague sender immediately wanted to write, but I never felt I had anything specific I wanted to write about, probably because language itself doesn’t feel like an obvious thing to write about. I’m not sure if I ever had an epiphany: I think I’d just talked about it enough that it seemed inevitable 😊

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    • And I felt like it got easier after a few months. I stopped worrying I’d run out of things to write, and I think looking back you can find threads between posts you hadn’t realised were there. The time will fly till you’re celebrating your first anniversary 😊.

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      • I did actually pass that mark a month or so back 😉 Although i didn’t really make a thing of it, as, unlike your blog, mine is purely an outlet/ coping mechanism for me; i doubt it makes any actual sense to anybody. We all know it’s bit crap, really 😉 It’s very nice that there are blogs out there ( like yours and others) with something substantial to offer, though! Hope you continue to enjoy doing what you’re doing 🙂

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  5. Congratulations that is a big mile stone given the content of your blog. Mine has not content and comes fairly easily but yours requires thought and work and editing and the giving of knowledge and entertainment. Keep it up and many more I hope.
    ~~dru~~

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  6. Congrats on your blog reaching one year! I really do enjoy what you’re doing with your blog so please keep it up! As someone who does linguistics, but has never had to work with English I genuinely enjoy your content. Don’t stop doing what you’re doing!

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